1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a new method and apparatus for acquiring uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional spectra within a single scan, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for acquiring uni- and multi-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectra within a single scan. The present invention also relates to a variety of methods employing the principles of these methods or techniques.
2. State of the Art
In terms of applicability to unravel the nature of molecular systems, few analytical techniques rival the insight furnished by spectroscopy studies based on the acquisition of multidimensional spectra. Such spectroscopies include optical, paramagnetic, electron, mass and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopies. Included among this latter category is the method known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Whether used to discover new pharmaceutical drugs, to characterize new catalysts, to investigate the structure and dynamics of proteins, or to carry out a non-invasive imaging diagnosis, few analyses are nowadays performed without the aid of at least some form of multidimensional experiment, and especially a multidimensional NMR experiment. One drawback of these protocols is that, by contrast to one-dimensional spectroscopic methods, multidimensional techniques, and particularly multidimensional NMR, requires relatively long measurement times associated with the acquisition of hundreds or thousands of scans. This places certain kinds of rapidly changing systems in Chemistry, such as proteins changing conformation, analytes flowing through a chromatography column, unstable biomolecules, outside their realm. Also unsuitable to relatively slow multidimensional NMR analyses are the thousands of compounds that can currently be made available by a single combinatorial-chemistry assay. Long acquisition times also make multidimensional NMR, as presently performed, ill-suited for in vivo analyses, and for clinical measurements in combination with spatial localization techniques.